Elon Musk's Solar Roof Concept Could Help Turn Your House Into A Mini Power Station

When he’s not trying to crack commercial space travel, the Silicon Valley visionary is working on more effective ways to harness the sun’s power.

Now, a new SolarCity invention could help home owners to do exactly that.

During an earnings call this week, the entrepreneur revealed that the company is developing roofs made out of solar cells.

Musk knows that homeowners with old roofs don’t install solar panels, but he hopes that the millions of people who replace their roof each year will now consider the technology.

There’s currently scant detail about how the solar roof will work, but Musk did reveal that they will be tailored for each home.

SolarCity’s Peter Rive said the idea only came about a couple of weeks ago, but that it should go into production in the second quarter of 2017.

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As Engadget notes, that’s around the time that SolarCity will have completed its merger with the electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla. So we’ll have to wait till then to find out more.

What we do know is that Musk is set on transforming each home into a mini-power plant, as outlined in his latest masterplan.

By merging Tesla and SolarCity, Musk hopes to create a single defining product: “A smoothly integrated and beautiful solar-roof-with-battery product that just works, empowering the individual as their own utility, and then scale that throughout the world.

“One ordering experience, one installation, one service contact, one phone app.”